Teaching has always been hard. But last year, I felt everything had become that much harder. We were dealing with more complex student issues than ever before: anxiety, workload, family issues, self-esteem - the challenges were multiple. As a consequence, staff were struggling, too.

Educators care deeply about their students: it’s one of the reasons we manage to last in such an exhausting profession. But because we care, the issues our students were experiencing were affecting us deeply. As the issues piled up, so did our own stress levels, and our ability to provide the calm and supportive environment needed was challenged.

Our staff and student wellbeing systems were already robust. We pinpointed any problems as they emerged, created solutions and tracked their impact. And we are lucky to have a team that thrives on thinking critically and solving problems. In addition, we have a very tight-knit community of students, aged 17-80, who look out for each other to an astonishing degree.

But could we have been doing even more? I have been practising yoga and mindfulness for 18 years and I began to see ways in which I could provide an extra strand of support for those at the college. Would a regular hit of reflective quiet movement have any impact on the problems we were facing? It had worked for me, and there was only one way to find out whether it could work for others, too.

So, one late-November morning, I asked my first-year group to stand and tell me if they had any aches or pains, and informed them to be careful of these. Then I asked them to raise their arms gently, move their hands, cross their arms, stretch their fingers, and then place their hands over their stomach area to feel the gentle rise of the belly on the in-breath and the fall on the out-breath. We did that for two minutes. Then I asked the students to sit down and we all carried on as before.

Surprisingly, everyone went along with it. And afterwards, the room seemed refreshed, renewed. The feedback after class was overwhelmingly positive. People began to ask me to do it more and, soon enough, requests came in from other staff and students asking if they could do it, too.

The trouble is, a short session with your own students is very different from putting on a separate class dedicated only to mindful practice. I felt very exposed: was I confident enough? Was I knowledgeable enough? How could I ensure that what I was doing was safe?

Stretching my knowledge

I spent some time speaking with a wide variety of yoga teachers, gathering books, adapting existing mindfulness scripts from trusted sources and writing some short ones of my own. I also decided to sign up to a 10-month yoga foundation course with the British Wheel of Yoga - this was something I had long wished to do and now seemed like the right time. (Teachers also need their teachers.)

It was only after all this preparation that I felt confident enough to get started. But if I was going to do it, I decided I wanted to see if it actually made a difference.

So early in 2019, I implemented a series of 10-minute drop-in sessions that ran every Monday. Posters went up, I released details to students in sessions and I notified staff via email. A large group attended and, at the end, I asked participants to fill in a questionnaire. The questions were designed to gauge each individual’s perception of their stress and concentration levels.

During the following months, I collected a huge amount of data and I am pleased to say the sessions seemed to be having a significant impact. Self-reported stress levels went down, while concentration levels rose. Comments focused on how much more relaxed, joyful and energised people felt.

I thought it was important to share these results, so at our cross-campus CPD events I presented the findings of my research project. I also scheduled time at these events to run a small session so people could see it in action.

That’s when things really started moving. During the past six months, I have delivered mindfulness sessions to hundreds of staff and students across all seven Coleg Sir Gâr and Coleg Ceredigion campuses. I have built a supportive network of staff across the campuses who can deliver sessions, too, via shared access to information, audio and scripts. My role has also shifted somewhat: I now deliver a mindfulness toolkit to student teachers to better equip them for the strains of teaching, to make them more resilient and to support the work that they will go on to do with learners. And last summer, I was also lucky enough to present my findings to an Association of Colleges conference at Morley College, London.

Balanced approach

I am more convinced than ever, now, that we need to make this the norm in colleges. Wellbeing has to be a fundamental part of what colleges do - it cannot just be about bolt-on initiatives. The supportive nature of many staff at Coleg Sir Gâr and Coleg Ceredigion, and in particular of managers who have striven to provide space and time for this work to happen, has been fundamental to the success of the project. Only through their support has it yielded extraordinary results and facilitated a more positive working atmosphere for staff and students.

Will leaders in other colleges around the UK follow this example? For any doubters, I am going to make it impossible to say no. Requests have come in from our construction and agriculture departments for sessions with staff and learners. This is particularly pleasing and shows that the techniques can benefit everyone, regardless of discipline.

What’s more, I am about to embark upon work with a focus group of staff and students, tracking them across a larger span of time and measuring changes in more detail.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, teaching is hard. But we can make it a little easier if managers are willing to put their weight behind interventions like this.

Amelia Kilvington is course coordinator HE PGCE, and art and design lecturer at Coleg Sir Gâr and Coleg Ceredigion

This article originally appeared in the 24 January 2020 issue under the headline “My yoga scheme was met with sunny salutations”

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